Starcrossed
by Emmapants
Summary: We're condemned and can only wait. Rose at her TARDIS and the Doctor at his. Continuing in the series begun with Spaces.
1. Rose

_In your eyes I would hide  
By your side I could defy  
The forces tearing us apart  
But reality, as it seems  
Looking back, is that our dream  
Was fated from the start_  
Ash, "Starcrossed"

Rose's TARDIS sat in its usual spot, on the overgrown lawn between a brick wall and the sidewalk on a corner of the Powell Estate. The sun shone through the leaves of a nearby tree, and a breeze swept through Rose's shoulder-length hair. She sat on the patch of grass to the right of the TARDIS, her back against the blue wood, her side pressed to the brick wall and her black boots nearly reaching the concrete of the sidewalk. She zipped her red hoodie up a little more and remembered a time when she wasn't so alone.

Not that she wasn't surrounded by people all the time. She had her parents and her brother, Mickey and Jake and people from work. But her parents had each other and their finding of each other was still new after two years. And hanging out with Mickey and Jake was a little too third wheel for her, as much as she loved them and they tried.

And so she had the TARDIS. She cut back to part-time at Torchwood and filled her days with learning the intricacies of the various knobs, dials and mallets of the console and enough rudimentary Gallifreyan to understand the display screen and coordinate where she wanted to go. She went to night classes and took Physics and History and Astronomy and an art class in the hopes it'd help her be able to write the complex circles of the Gallifreyan language a little better.

And at night, after all was said and done, she went to bed in her room in the TARDIS and dreamed of her Doctor. Most of the time it was her thin, brunet, geek-chic suit-clad Doctor, although sometimes it was a slightly less pretty man with a Northern accent and a leather jacket. But every once in a while, she'd dream different men, most often a man with a riot of brown curls and the longest scarf she'd ever seen in her life. Sometimes the man was old, sometimes he was young, sometimes blonde, sometimes brunet, sometimes grey, sometimes he had some really ridiculous clothing... no, oftentimes, but sometimes more so than others. But he was always her Doctor. And she lived her monotonous days for her dreams and the hope that she would see him again.

A single tear made its way past her mascara-coated eyelashes and trickled down her cheek. And she unconsciously leaned a little to the right and tangled her hand in the grass. She could only hope he wasn't as lonely as she was.


	2. The Doctor

Martha Jones was having lunch with her sister somewhere near the Powell Estate. This struck the Doctor as extremely unfair, especially when the TARDIS landed them _at_ the Powell Estate and Martha took off saying, close enough and she'd meet him back at this same spot in an hour or so.

Strangely enough, the Doctor found that he wasn't parked in his usual spot, but rather a spot of grass between a sidewalk and a wall, sort of near the playground toward the other end from where Rose's flat had been. He stood in the grass, brow furrowed at the blue police box, running a finger down the edge.

"Why'd you park here?" he asked her aloud. It made sense for her to choose the Powell Estate as somewhere she knew to park, but it wasn't even the right spot, so that just blew that theory out of the water.

He could have left, gone off and had an adventure while Martha ate lunch, but for some reason he stayed. Maybe because he hadn't been here in a while, must've been five years since he cleaned out the Tylers' apartment, give or take some. Although, when he checked the date, it was really just a few months ago. But someone else would be living there by now. There was nothing left to tie him here, no Mickey, no Jackie, no Rose. Offhandedly, he wondered if Shireen still lived here. But it was just a place, the people who had filled it for him gone.

And yet he found he couldn't leave. So he lay out on the spot of grass next to the TARDIS, legs crossed and the heels of his converse perched on the sidewalk, hands behind his head, staring at the sky and thinking of Rose.

It'd been years now and still he thought of her every day, dreamed of her every time he slept no matter how short. He spent his time travelling alone, unable to bear having a hand to replace hers. There'd been the one trip with Donna, a year after Canary Wharf, immediately after Bad Wolf Bay, which had been good; Donna hadn't let him wallow, but once she was gone he decided it'd be better to be on his own. It took him a while to let Martha in; he'd been denying it the first couple of trips, but she was a good companion, which was why he'd taken her along in the first place. She wasn't Rose, but at least he'd gotten by enough to be able to be friends with someone new.

His left hand made its way out from under his head to lay in the grass above it. And if he imagined hard enough, he could pretend to feel the familiar grip of Rose's hand in his.

_Girl we're star-crossed and can't escape  
We're condemned and can only wait  
At this time now it's far too late  
To save us from our fate_  
Ash, "Starcrossed"


End file.
